SECAI Core · phase 12 of 15 · noun

Data loss/leak prevention

A software solution that detects and prevents sensitive information from being stored on unauthorized systems or transmitted over unauthorized networks. Also known as 'DLP.'

The Explain card

Plain English
DLP is software that watches where sensitive information is going and blocks it from being stored on unauthorised systems or sent over unauthorised channels.
Example
An employee pastes a confidential merger document into a public AI chatbot. The DLP agent recognises the classification label and blocks the upload, logging the attempt for the security team.
Why it matters
AI assistants are a new, very convenient exit for company data. DLP extends existing controls to prompts, file uploads and model outputs so that convenience does not become disclosure.
Hook
The bouncer at the exit, checking pockets on the way out.

Word knowledge

How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.

In a sentence

The security team configured data loss/leak prevention to block customer account numbers from leaving managed laptops through email or USB storage.

Why these words
  • data Latin data, things given names the material at issue
  • loss Old English los, destruction or loss presents one possible unwanted outcome
  • leak Middle English leken, to let water in or out presents an alternative unwanted outcome
  • prevention Late Latin praeventio, action of anticipating names the protective purpose
Where it came from
Origin
an English information-security compound built from Latin data, Germanic loss and leak, and Latin-derived prevention
Entered the language
late 20th century
What changed
Data became a mass noun for digital information, while loss and leak acquired specialized computing senses and were joined as alternatives before prevention.
How it is spelled
Pattern
The solidus joins the alternatives loss and leak without surrounding spaces.
Pattern
Prevention keeps the prevent stem and adds the noun-forming suffix -ion.
Breaks the pattern
Data is historically plural, but it often takes a singular verb as a mass noun in computing.

Spelled like

  • input/output
  • read/write
  • intervention
Broken into chunks
  • data
    • datum
    • database
  • loss/leak
    • gain/loss
    • input/output
  • prevent
    • preventive
    • preventable
  • -ion
    • detection
    • protection
What it sits beside

Same subject

Same shape

information protection controls

security initialisms

  • DLP
  • IAM
  • SIEM

Where it sits in the deck

Phase 12: Defensive Technologies and Secure Development Practices

Map defences directly to the attacks just catalogued — the technical controls, secure coding practices, and protective tools that harden AI and traditional systems alike.

Neighbours in this phase